For decades, people have been getting rid of cockroaches by setting out bait mixed with poison. But in the late 1980s, in an apartment test
kitchen in Florida, something went very wrong.

A killer product stopped working. Cockroach populations there kept rising. Mystified researchers tested and discarded theory after theory until they
finally hit on the explanation: In a remarkably rapid display of evolution at work, many of the cockroaches had lost their sweet tooth, rejecting the
corn syrup meant to attract them.

In as little as five years, the sugar-rejecting trait had become so widespread that the bait had been rendered useless.

"Cockroaches are highly adaptive, and they're doing pretty well in the arms race with us," said North Carolina State University entomologist Jules
Silverman, discoverer of the glucose aversion in that Florida kitchen during a bait test.

The findings illustrate the evolutionary prowess that has helped make cockroaches so hard to stamp out that it is jokingly suggested they could
survive nuclear war.

If you have roaches chances are your neighbors have roaches. Because they travel from door to door. If you live in the city. And you find a roach it
does nothing to bomb your house because your neighbors and they're neighbors would have to be bombed at the same time. it's just something you have
to live with.

Say you bombed your house. The neighboring hive is cookin up another queen to come start a hive at your house so your back to square 1.

The rainy season always brings cockroaches- the big flying kind. We've tested every method of killing them, from poisons and sticky traps to
microwaving and flushing them. The only thing we've found that truly does the job is going Samurai on them with a good flyswatter in each hand! I
hate flying cockroaches!

They are part of the creation too. Mother Earth made them immune to our influence. That's something we need to think about. Maybe we don't
understand the message. Maybe one day science will discover an important use for them, then we will thank God we didn't exterminated them.

If one implants a foreign tissue in the cockroach's abdomen, the GRs become activated and begin to encapsulate the implant by flattening and
wrapping around it. The activated GRs show considerable increase in the number of both the microtubules and the nuclear pores of the nuclear envelope.
Such structural changes in an activated arthropod immunocyte and their functional significance in its immune reaction against a foreign tissue have
not been previously reported.

Karp began by injecting his roaches with honeybee venom. He gave them two weeks to mount whatever immune response they could, and then injected
them with another dose--this one large enough to be lethal. Not only did the roaches survive the onslaught but their immune response seemed up to even
human standards. It was specific to honeybee venom--subsequent injection of a similar dose of snake venom killed them--and it had a memory. You could
rest these animals almost two months and then challenge them with the honeybee venom again, and essentially it acted like a booster, says Karp. You
got these tremendous, very quick reactions to the venom.

My complex has them living in the walls since hurricane Katrina (2006) . They get into the condo from electric outlets, AC vents etc. The bylaws state
it is the Office Staff's job to get rid of bugs. They won't do it because it will cost thousands the complex doesn't have. . I am going to have to
get people together one day and sue our homeowners association.

Sure we fog and bait on a regular basis (you name it we've tried it) but it doesn't help much - so I just live with them.

5000 new pets for my cat to play with. They may look bad but are harmless. The wife and I have never gotten sick. We keep a clean house so they dont
stay long but you do see them going from here to there. Honestly, I dont care after all these years. I cant fight them and they don't bug me ( ha ha)
Yeah, I live with German roaches - thousands of them. Big deal. There are billions of people all over the world who live with bugs and they are not
going extinct due to any germs spread by the bugs. I think the hype on the dangers of these things is overrated. I should know.

Well, they have stuck around for some reason. Sounds like they offer some secrets about the immune system for sure.

The "higher powers" must have some reason to allow them to stay, after everything man has come up with to rid ourselves of them. There should be
plenty of the "medicine" they have to offer, if we ever discover what it is.

The Above Top Secret Web site is a wholly owned social content community of The Above Network, LLC.

This content community relies on user-generated content from our member contributors. The opinions of our members are not those of site ownership who maintains strict editorial agnosticism and simply provides a collaborative venue for free expression.